Gallery: Blocked on Weibo

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |11| 12>>(Warlord / jūnfá) is a person who has both military and civilian authority over an area within a nation. A warlord draws power from armed forces who are loyal to him and not to the central authority. Chinese history is replete with cases of warlords fomenting rebel­lion (or valiantly defending their territory, depending on the vic­tor’s point of view), in particular during the Three Kingdoms Era and the period from the end of the Qing Dynasty to reunification in 1928, known as the Warlord Era.

Why it is blocked: This is another case of a noncontemporary word seemingly being unnecessarily blocked. China did reach one of its weakest points during the terrible infighting of the Warlord Era, and Chiang Kai­shek’s defeat of the warlords is often credited to the Kuomintang (KMT) and not to the Chinese Communist Party, which contributed troops and resources while allied with the KMT as the First United Front. But the block is probably due to netizens comparing their corrupt and abusive local leaders to warlords.1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |11| 12>>